Two hundred miles east of Fairbanks near the Yukon border sits the tiny town of Chicken, Alaska. It was the second town ever to be incorporated in Alaska, and gold is still mined there today, a century after most of the other gold rush towns were left deserted. Though it's surrounded by vast wastes of muskeg and black spruce forest, Chicken is still a popular stop for travelers curious about one of the Last Frontier's last surviving gold towns—and, of course, its weird name. It's the world's only city that owes its name to its founders being incredibly self-conscious about their bad spelling.

Chicken isn't named after chickens.

Chicken, Alaska was founded in the 1890s by prospectors mining for gold on the nearby Fortymile River. The settlers survived their harsh first winter by chowing down on ptarmigan, a local grouse that's now the Alaska state bird. The grateful townsfolk decided to call their new home Ptarmigan—but turn-of-the-century sourdoughs weren't exactly famous for their accurate spelling. (In the miners' defense, "Ptarmigan" is a pterribly ptough word to spell.) Not wanting to screw it up and be the laughingstock of the territory, they punted and named the town "Chicken" instead.

It's egg-ceptionally remote.

During the Klondike days, Chicken was a boom town, home to over four hundred gold-fevered miners. But today, according to latest census, the population has dropped to just seven. Locals insist that the real year-round number is around twenty or thirty, but that can be double or triple in summer, the height of the tourist season. Alaskan Route 5, the Taylor Highway, is the only way to visit Chicken, and in the winter it's closed to everything but snowmobiles. This so-called "highway" is actually a narrow gravel road, but it's still the world's only road that crosses a Chicken!

The nightlife isn't for the chicken-hearted.

If you do brave the lonely road into Chicken, what would you find? Well, the list of things you wouldn't find is pretty long: the town has no electricity, no phones, no Internet, no mayor, no city council, no pavement, and no central plumbing. There is a cute, quirky downtown, but it's made up of a poultry—er, a paltry four businesses: a general store, a café, a liquor store, and a saloon. When things get wild in the Chicken Creek Saloon, local tradition dictates that ladies donate their underwear to a small cannon, which blasts them into shreds over the parking lot.

Chicken has embraced its accidental name in a big way.

Sorry, ptarmigans. Visitors to Chicken can now order a chicken dinner at the cafe (though baked salmon is the specialty) and every summer the town organizes a music festival called Chickenstock. The lone public restroom is a three-door outhouse (no sewers, remember) that sits under a big sign reading "Chicken Poop." The double O's are drawn as chicks hatching from eggs.

Explore the world's oddities every week with Ken Jennings, and check out his book Maphead for more geography trivia.